Francisco Ayala, 25, and Marisol Reyes, 18, got married Friday — along with 27 other couples — at the Plantronics Mexico maquiladora in Tijuana, where they met as co-workers more than a year ago. NELVIN C. CEPEDA • U-T

Francisco Ayala, 25, and Marisol Reyes, 18, got married Friday — along with 27 other couples — at the Plantronics Mexico maquiladora in Tijuana, where they met as co-workers more than a year ago. NELVIN C. CEPEDA • U-T

TIJUANA 
After their gazes first met the on the factory floor, it didn’t take long for Marisol Reyes and Francisco Ayala to fall in love. More than a year later, when it came time for marriage vows, the young maquiladora workers didn’t stray far from their respective work stations.

Along with 27 other couples, the two Plantronics Mexico employees were joined in matrimony Friday inside the company cafeteria. There were decorations, white cupcakes, encouraging words from the top boss and an overflow crowd of family members and co-workers to cheer them on.

The wedding ceremonies, held each February at the Tijuana plant since 2002, are part of the company’s ongoing campaign to motivate its staff of more than 2,000 employees. Workers also can register for on-site parenting classes, earn high school diplomas, get their eyesight checked, and change their cars’ license plates without leaving the company’s sprawling facilities near the Otay Mesa border crossing.

“If we solve problems for them, guess what? They’re going to solve problems for us. They become creative, they get very engaged with the company,” said Alejandro Bustamante, president of Plantronics Mexico, which produces telephone headsets and other electronic products for the U.S. market. Its parent company is headquartered in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Of more than 560 maquiladoras in Tijuana, only a handful offer a range of workplace benefits that reach beyond the factory floor, and few — if any — can match those offered to Plantronics workers.

Low wages a challenge

Across town in El Florido Industrial Park, another large U.S.-owned maquiladora, DJ Orthopedics de Mexico, has been striving to motivate employees with a wide range of programs. These include an employee talent contest and an employee wedding program.

The companies said such practices have helped create a loyal and resourceful workforce, a challenge for the city’s maquiladora industry. Low factory wages — about 800 pesos a week for entry-level workers, slightly more than $62 at current exchange rates — have historically led to high turnover rates, though the economic downturn has in recent years kept those numbers down.

In contrast with Matamoros, a city across the Texas border where labor unions negotiate maquiladora working conditions through collective bargaining, the trend in Tijuana’s factories has been a relationship forged directly between workers and the executive teams that run the maquiladoras, said Cirila Quintero, a Matamoros-based sociologist with Colegio de la Frontera Norte who studies the industry.

‘Culture of the big family’

Quintero said Japanese maquiladoras first brought the model to Tijuana in the 1980s. “It’s the culture of the big family,” she said, where workers are called associates.

Practices such as sports competitions, holiday parties, company anniversary picnics and beauty contests have helped “ensure there are no conflicts,” said Quintero, who conducted a study in the 1990s in Tijuana and found “the workers liked it, they felt appreciated.”

At DJ Orthopedics, the Tijuana subsidiary of Vista-based DJO Global, the 2,100-employee company has been motivating workers through programs that Eduardo Salcedo, the vice president of Mexico operations, calls “thinking from the fence out.”